of a sort which I never read except in the line of duty. With me, a very little Stocktonian extravaganza goes a long way. So does a very little of the ordinary run of humorous verse. Practically all the rest goes very well, including the satires in "Savage Portraits," which are as neat and sharp as those of the Roman masters. But I enjoy Don Marquis most when he is enjoying himself most, and that is obviously when his imagination is at work and he is creating something, if it is only—a prolific cat, a loquacious cockroach, or a special kind of thoroughbred dog: "Any dog can be full of just one kind of thoroughbred blood. That's nothing! But Spot here has got more different kinds of thoroughbred blood in him than any dog you ever saw." I admire the creative energy with which Don Marquis steers his elderly inebriate through his barroom reminiscences; I prefer the Old Soak's gorgeous, glowing historical style in his account of Ancient History to that of Gibbon, Wells or Van Loon, and I admire immensely the masterly poetizing stroke in the invention of "that damn little athyiss, Hennery Withers." That is Shakespearean—no less.
But previous to "The Dark Hours" I suspect the most memorable writing that Don Marquis has done is in eight or ten short stories: "Old Man Murtrie," "Never Say Die," "McDermott," "Looney, the Mutt" and "The Locked Box"—in "Carter and Other People"; and "The Saddest Man" and the dog and boy stories in "The Revolt of the Oyster." In reading this group of stories I have no compunctious feeling that I am enjoying humor by the sacrifice of a poet; for in the wider sense of the word these stories are poetry. Several of them are, I think, the kind of
